Paul follows his direction to pray (in four ways) by completing the sentence "… supplications, prayer, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men;…" by saying: "For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty  For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior;" 1 Tim 2:2-3

He could have said to pray for the unsaved, or your family, or your health.  He could have told you to pray for your own shortcomings.  But no, he said pray for kings and those in authority.  Isn't that strange--of all the things he could have chosen to tell us to pray for.  When was the last time you prayed for our president, congress, governor or even perhaps your pastor?   I certainly have not been putting that at the top of my list.

I think the reason that Paul gave for praying for these leaders should give us pause.  So that we can live in "quiet and peace".  Remember when you were growing up your mom would say, "I just want some peace and quiet"?  Every thing else works better when we have peace and quiet. We take peace and quiet for granted.   We certainly need to pray that our leaders will give us peace and quiet and stop the fighting among themselves and learn to talk to each other and solve the problems we elected them to solve.  We need to pray for them.

I Tim. 2:4 "Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth."  The way we act as Christian citizens is being observed by the outside world.  Paul is making a direct connection between giving respect  to our leaders, and to people being saved and learning the truth about Christ.

You can't be one kind of Christian one day and another the next and have anyone want to know more about your God.  And yes, Paul is saying prayer changes things.  Maybe us.